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enDavid Powlison on the ministry of CCEFhttp://www.ccef.org/resources/video/david-powlison-ministry-ccef
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Any Given DayDavid PowlisonFri, 31 Jul 2015 12:22:50 +0000ccefnetadmin4222 at http://www.ccef.orgAny Given Day - Q&A with Aaron Sironihttp://www.ccef.org/resources/blog/any-given-day-qa-aaron-sironi
<p>Aaron&nbsp;Sironi is a faculty member at CCEF and also serves as the director of counseling at the CCEF affiliate office in Montana. He wrote an article in the latest issue of the Journal of Biblical Counseling (29:2) titled &ldquo;<a href="http://www.ccef.org/resources/jbc">Healing from Post-Abortion Grief</a>.&rdquo; Aaron and intern, Ann-Marie McKittrick, are exploring how to serve alongside a crisis pregnancy ministry in Billings, Montana, and yearn to see the church become a place of healing and hope for those who have been impacted by abortion.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>You recently published an article in the <em>Journal</em> about post-abortion grief. Can you tell us more about who this resource is for and why you wrote it?&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>Christ&rsquo;s mercies are deeper than the sin of abortion. But some men and women who have had an abortion suffer from profound regret, shame, and fear because they don&rsquo;t believe that Christ really forgives and heals those who have taken the life of their own child(ren). In my article, I affirm that Jesus absolutely offers pardon for this sin. I approach this truth from several angles so that these sufferers are able to trust and believe it.&nbsp;</p>
<p>I also wrote the article because I have seen how political and church environments inhibit people from talking about their past, especially a past that involves an abortion. As a result, my article also targets pastors. I want them to realize that there <em>are</em> people in their congregations who have had or been complicit in an abortion. I want them to speak about this issue from the pulpit. Once they begin to address the experience of abortion publically, my hope is that the people who struggle with post-abortion grief will no longer have to suffer in secret and silence. I long to see pastors and church members bear the burdens of these sufferers so that the church might become a place where they receive help and healing.&nbsp;</p>
<p>So my article is for sufferers and pastors, and it also is for counselors. I want to inform, equip, and encourage other believers to counsel those who struggle with post-abortion grief.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Can you share what help looks like for someone with post-abortion grief?</strong></p>
<p>I wrote about a woman named Lisa in my article. Her story is a testimony of healing and redemption. Let me share some of it with you now.</p>
<p>Lisa became pregnant while at college. She aborted her baby and later was traumatized by both the abortion and its aftereffects. She came to me for counseling many years later, after she had married and raised several children. She continued to suffer from deep remorse, grief, and shame. But her suffering was entirely in secret. Not even her husband understood the sorrow she bore from her abortion. Simply confessing her abortion to me was monumental. Towards the end of our counseling, I encouraged her to consider sharing with her family about the abortion, but she didn&rsquo;t think that she could do it. But over time the Lord did give Lisa courage to share the story of her pregnancy and abortion. When her husband and children finally heard of her grief and sorrow, they came around her and offered incredible support. Although they saw her anguish quietly for many years, they never knew why. As a family, they decided to honor the baby by giving her a name&mdash;Rebecca Grace. They held a memorial service for the baby and began to celebrate Rebecca&rsquo;s birthday on Lisa&rsquo;s due date.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Lisa&rsquo;s disclosure of her abortion and sorrow enabled her to heal. She no longer suffers in silence because she invited her family to help carry the burden. Lisa&rsquo;s family also incarnates Christ by extending to her forgiveness, intelligent intercession, and encouragement.</p>
<p>By the end of our time together, God had begun to transform this part of Lisa&rsquo;s life. Though her past still pains her, she is now able to grieve in the company and presence of her family. And I witnessed first-hand how this made all the difference in her life. &nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>What can we do to love people well who have had abortions in the past?</strong></p>
<p>If you know people who have had or been complicit in an abortion, I would encourage you to move toward them. Ask how they&rsquo;re doing, grieve with them, and help them process their sorrow in a way that honors God and the child that was aborted. &nbsp;</p>
<p>If you&rsquo;re not genuinely compassionate toward sinners, then people who have had abortions won&rsquo;t share with you. And so I urge you to be a person of love and compassion. Incarnate the mercy of Jesus. Bring strugglers to the truth that their sin is never too great for Christ&rsquo;s mercy.&nbsp;</p>
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AbortionAny Given DayAaron SironiThu, 30 Jul 2015 20:55:51 +0000ccefnetadmin4221 at http://www.ccef.orgKeeping Gossip Out of Prayer Requestshttp://www.ccef.org/resources/blog/keeping-gossip-out-prayer-requests
<p>Oh, those infamous prayer requests!</p>
<p>&ldquo;We need to pray for Olivia and Liam. I heard that they might be getting a divorce!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m calling to ask for prayer for the church board. Something big is happening tonight. The chairman might resign!&rdquo;</p>
<p>How do we keep gossip out of our prayer ministries? This is the most frequently asked question people ask me since I began teaching on resisting gossip.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s complicated. We want to encourage intercessory prayer, so we create phone chains and email prayer lists, and we solicit requests from people at small group meetings. However, prayer requests come from sinners, are about sinners and are passed on to other sinners, so there are plenty of opportunities for sinful gossip to enter into the process (Proverbs 10:19).</p>
<p>Here is a mental checklist I developed for managing prayer requests in a careful, godly manner. Before you pass on a request, make sure to: check your facts, check your role, check your audience, and check your heart.</p>
<p><strong>Check Your Facts</strong></p>
<p>Prayer requests can get muddled very fast. If the situation is not something potentially shameful, getting the facts wrong may not be a big deal. If it gets reported that &ldquo;Cheryl is having her tonsils out,&rdquo; when Cheryl is really going to have her wisdom teeth removed, it&rsquo;s embarrassing to the one with the incorrect facts, but not embarrassing to Cheryl. But if we report that &ldquo;Cheryl got cut from the softball team&rdquo; or &ldquo;Cheryl lost her job&rdquo; or &ldquo;Cheryl broke up with Jeremy,&rdquo; and it&rsquo;s not true, then it could be very damaging.</p>
<p>So, check your facts. Is this info straight from the person it&rsquo;s about? Don&rsquo;t transmit hearsay or rumor. Make sure what you are passing on is true.</p>
<p>And remember&ndash;don&#39;t say more than you have to. You don&rsquo;t have to share all of the juicy details. God knows all about it.</p>
<p><strong>Check Your Role</strong></p>
<p>Are you the right person to pass on this request? Do the people being talked about want this request to be made known? Would they want it repeated? Is the prayer request confidential? (If so, keep it that way!) Is it your place to pass it on? Should you shoulder this prayer burden alone and not pass it on to others?</p>
<p>Many of us never ask ourselves these key questions, but we should. Sometimes we still need to pray for people who wouldn&rsquo;t want it&ndash;unbelievers who don&rsquo;t believe in prayer, for example. But, often, simply applying Jesus&rsquo; Golden Rule answers a lot of difficult questions: &ldquo;Do to others what you would have done to you&rdquo; (Matt. 7:12).</p>
<p><strong>Check Your Audience</strong></p>
<p>Some people shouldn&rsquo;t be trusted with certain prayer requests. Think about the person you are talking with. Are they tempted to be a gossip? Do they seem over-eager to hear bad news? Do they have a reputation for being unsafe with confidences (Proverbs 11:13)?</p>
<p>Be discerning. There may be nothing wrong with passing a request on to Melinda but everything wrong with passing it on to Daryl.</p>
<p><strong>Check Your Heart&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>Sinful gossip is bearing bad news behind someone&rsquo;s back out of a bad heart. What is <em>your</em> motivation for sharing this prayer request? Is it loving? Is it for the glory of God?&nbsp;</p>
<p>Be honest. Do you actually want to be seen as someone &ldquo;in the know&rdquo; with an inside scoop? Do you want to impress your listener?&nbsp; Do you get a surreptitious thrill from sharing the secret? Would you say it differently if the person you&rsquo;re talking about was present? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, be very careful how you handle information about other people.</p>
<p>Anyone can be tempted to gossip. But we can avoid it if we slow down and evaluate whether we are the right person, with the right motivation, talking to the right audience with the right information. A good prayer request comes from the good stored up in a good heart, and one day, we&rsquo;ll all have to give an account for the prayer requests we passed on (cf. Matthew 12:35-36). May we be found faithful.</p>
<p>An earlier version of this blog appeared on other websites&nbsp;including <em>The Exchange: A Blog by Ed Stetzer</em> on October 14, 2014.</p>
<p>Matt Mitchell will be joining us at this year&#39;s conference to speak on gossip. Click below for more information on the 2015 National Conference&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ccef.org/events/national-conference/2015">Side by Side</a>.</p>
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GossipMatthew C. MitchellFri, 24 Jul 2015 15:59:38 +0000ccefnetadmin4218 at http://www.ccef.orgAny Given Day - Q&A with Ed Welchhttp://www.ccef.org/resources/blog/any-given-day-qa-ed-welch
<p><em>Today Ed Welch shares what he is working on. As you read please pray for Ed&rsquo;s trip to Australia this week and consider supporting a day of ministry. We need $2,300 in donations on any given day to support our work.&nbsp;</em></p>
<p><strong>Can you tell us why CCEF travels abroad to speak and teach? What do you enjoy most about your international trips?</strong></p>
<p>In recent years I have been traveling more. I am by nature a homebody, but I enjoy these opportunities for a couple of reasons. First, I learn a ton. I receive different questions that stretch me. I get to see the way the church lives out its mission in various cultures. I get to prepare new material from Scripture. And I get to meet the best of people.</p>
<p>Second, I want to encourage like-minded people and institutional partners. For example, in the next few months I will be in Australia and Brazil. Australia has an emerging biblical counseling movement with some fine leaders. Who wouldn&rsquo;t want to be part of that? Brazil is home to many CCEF students. This country too has some fine leadership for biblical counseling in place. The culture is more open than most&mdash;which means that the citizens speak openly about their own hearts and are willing to speak openly to each other when someone is struggling.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>What fruit have you in biblical counseling around the world? And how has CCEF helped?&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>There are certainly fine leaders and growing movements in a number of countries and CCEF seems to have been the institutional catalyst for both. As a training ministry our hope is to support the development of leaders and movements in biblical counseling wherever the Spirit is on the move. Over the past 35 years it has been delightful for me to see the growth. How does it happen? One student goes back home, loves strugglers well in ministry, and then meets other like-minded Christians. And then they pray together and grow together. And often they recommend our training to others.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>You mentioned traveling to Australia and Brazil this year. What ongoing relationship do you have with these folks?</strong></p>
<p>This will be my fourth trip to Australia. So my wife Sheri and I have dear brothers and sisters there. One ongoing relationship I have is a regular Skype appointment for discussing counseling situations with some Aussie pastors.</p>
<p>With Brazil, this will be my third visit. The invitations have all come from past students. We always enjoy the presence of at least one Brazilian on campus who is with us at CCEF for a semester or longer.</p>
<p><strong>These trips require financial support from our donors. Why do you believe it is important to support this work and ministry?</strong></p>
<p>We have become increasingly strategic in our travel. I typically do not go to a country unless there is a strong core group that has taken some of our classes either online or in person. And there needs to be a leadership that has a vision for how to implement biblical counseling in their context. The trips are packed from start to finish with opportunities to serve. &nbsp;</p>
<p>I believe that the cost is worthwhile because these trips have contributed to growing indigenous ministries. They serve our mission of &ldquo;restoring counseling to the church&rdquo; because the international groups tend to have a high percentage of pastors. And they make everything we do at CCEF more fruitful because we learn, get feedback, develop material, simplify and clarify material, and improve the work we do here.</p>
<p>Please pray for me as I travel and please consider supporting this important work.</p>
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Any Given DayEd WelchFri, 24 Jul 2015 15:53:37 +0000ccefnetadmin4217 at http://www.ccef.orgDavid Powlison on the ministry of the JBChttp://www.ccef.org/resources/video/david-powlison-ministry-jbc
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<p>David sits down to talk about the Journal of Biblical Counseling.</p>
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The Journal of Biblical CounselingDavid PowlisonTue, 21 Jul 2015 15:52:27 +0000jadkins4206 at http://www.ccef.orgCCEF Conference–more than the bookhttp://www.ccef.org/resources/video/ccef-conference-more-book
<p>Ed sits down and talks about the National Conference.</p>
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Side by SideEd WelchFri, 17 Jul 2015 20:52:54 +0000ccefnetadmin4205 at http://www.ccef.orgMinistry Stories - Brenda Paukenhttp://www.ccef.org/resources/blog/ministry-stories-brenda-pauken
<p>My husband and I support CCEF financially because we value all that it does as a ministry. In fact, we value CCEF&rsquo;s mission so strongly that I have immersed myself in CCEF&rsquo;s education and training for the past three years of my life. Last month I completed the internship program at CCEF, which I began after receiving a Master of Arts in counseling from Westminster Theological Seminary, where CCEF&rsquo;s faculty teaches.&nbsp; I live in Great Falls, Virginia, so that means I have spent much of the last three years driving back and forth to the Philadelphia area each week. &nbsp;</p>
<p>You might wonder why I chose to do this when many fine universities in the DC/Northern Virginia area offer degrees in counseling.&nbsp; The answer is simple: I wanted to be trained by CCEF.&nbsp; A number of years ago I was introduced to CCEF at my church. I began reading CCEF books, and they helped me to see my heart and my habits in new ways that encouraged my personal growth in Christ.&nbsp; Then five years ago, I began taking CCEF classes online so I would be better prepared to counsel the women at my church whom I had begun to counsel informally.&nbsp; I continued to be impressed with CCEF&rsquo;s depth of understanding of the human heart, the compassion for sinners and sufferers alike, and the vision for holy living in God&rsquo;s kingdom.&nbsp; I also continued to be personally challenged in my spiritual walk. I finished each course feeling better equipped to help other strugglers see how the gospel could transform their daily lives. &nbsp;</p>
<p>As I continued my studies in Westminster&rsquo;s MA program, I learned to develop a more thoughtful, comprehensive view of the human condition, and to see more clearly the evidences of God&rsquo;s grace, the pain of suffering, and the tenacity of sin.&nbsp; I learned how to engage with secular psychological theories in a respectful, yet critical, way. And I learned Scripture is sufficient to address the spectrum of human experiences.&nbsp; I began to see the commonalities between myself and any other person, no matter what the struggle.&nbsp; I was encouraged to offer people the same grace and forgiveness I was experiencing in Jesus Christ.</p>
<p>Having completed my degree, I entered the internship program at CCEF.&nbsp; There, I saw the teaching from the classroom come alive.&nbsp; The faculty and other counselors have such a depth of wisdom&mdash;evidenced by a thoughtful engagement with Scripture, a keen eye for people and the inclinations of the heart, and a desire to understand the nuances of each counselee&rsquo;s story instead of quickly categorizing people.&nbsp; The people at CCEF live what they teach; they are humble and eager learners with an acute awareness of their own daily need for Christ.&nbsp; They also generously share the insights they&rsquo;ve gained over years and decades of practicing biblical counseling.</p>
<p>I am now counseling in the context of my local church&mdash;doing one-on-one counseling, helping other church members become helpers themselves, and using biblical counseling evangelistically in my community.&nbsp; I have much left to learn, but also feel well prepared by CCEF to be faithful with my little corner of kingdom work.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s likely that few of you will be in a position to either uproot and move to the Philadelphia area or commute back and forth for study.&nbsp; However, there are many ways to benefit from CCEF&rsquo;s teachings.&nbsp; You can read their books, take classes online and attend the national conference. Based on my own experience, I&rsquo;m confident you&rsquo;ll find CCEF&rsquo;s biblical counseling resources to be life changing in ways you&rsquo;ll want to share with others.</p>
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Counseling MinistryBrenda PaukenFri, 17 Jul 2015 20:48:13 +0000ccefnetadmin4204 at http://www.ccef.orgAny Given Day - Q&A with Winston & Alasdairhttp://www.ccef.org/resources/blog/any-given-day-qa-winston-alasdair
<p><em>Today Winston Smith and Alasdair Groves share what they are working on. As you read please pray for their writing project and consider supporting a day of ministry. We need $2,300 in donations on any given day to support our work.&nbsp;</em></p>
<p><strong>Tell us about the writing project you are currently working on together.&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>Alasdair: Winston and I are co-writing a book on emotions. We counsel and know many people who feel guilty for experiencing negative emotions, such as anger, sadness, or discouragement. They assume their experience of these emotions means they aren&#39;t faithful Christians. We want to help people move away from a stoic view that suggests &ldquo;if you just try hard enough and have enough faith&rdquo; then you&#39;ll feel pretty good all the time. This is not the picture that the Bible paints.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Winston: I&rsquo;ve observed that people are unsure about how to process their emotions. And Christians in particular find it difficult. There is much skepticism about emotions in the Christian world and we tend to be more interested in locating sin in one&rsquo;s emotions rather than locating what good is there or how they might point us to something valuable. In light of this, I want this book to address how our emotional world is handicapped when we misunderstand what the Christian life is &ldquo;supposed&rdquo; to look like. We hope that this book will get into the hands of Christians who struggle with the Christian life and want biblical help. The book will be practical; it will include exercises, tools, and study questions for the reader and/or helper.</p>
<p><strong>What does Scripture say about emotions?</strong></p>
<p>Alasdair: The Bible reveals that our emotions have to do with our interpretation, evaluation, and core perspective on what&#39;s going on around us. We do this instinctively, not as the fruit of cool and dispassionate reflection. This is part of what it means to be an image bearer! We have emotions about things, because God has feelings about things, and we want to feel things as he does. He tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn&mdash;because that&#39;s what he does. He urges us to have compassion on one another&mdash;because he is moved by our plight and suffering. Emotions, throughout the Bible, are like color and music that bring life and depth to the things we see and hear. I have also thought of emotions as a treasure map, revealing what we really love, value, and treasure with exquisite detail.</p>
<p><strong>How has your understanding of emotions been shaped?&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>Winston: My understanding has been shaped by 25 years of counseling those who suffer. My counselees have taught me about emotions and they have helped me apply what I&rsquo;ve learned to other sufferers. I honestly feel honored to have walked with people struggling with anxiety, depression, crippling guilt and shame, and other painful emotional experiences. Each one has invited me into very personal and vulnerable areas of their lives and allowed me to learn and grow along with them. And because each one is unique, growth has had different emphases. Sometimes growth has meant celebrating together as we&rsquo;ve learned about the riches of what God has to say about emotions and the love of Christ. At other times growth has meant patiently bearing with me and letting me know when I&rsquo;ve applied Scripture to their emotional pain in ways that ring hollow or just completely miss what they&rsquo;re experiencing. I&rsquo;m a better counselor, and more importantly, a better Christian because of them.</p>
<p>Alasdair: I echo Winston. I&rsquo;ve seen so many people handle emotions as if they were a problem to be avoided and that doesn&rsquo;t resonate with the emotionality of the Bible, especially the Psalms and the way in which God is distressed by things that are hard and painful. And personally this is the single most important area of sanctification that the Lord has been working out in me over the past decade. I finally understand the freedom and even the calling I have to feel negative emotions (for me it has been especially grief), pray through them, and engage them rather than try to get rid of them.</p>
<p><strong>Can you share an example of how you think about emotional distress from a biblical point of view?</strong></p>
<p>Winston: I&#39;ve met with many counselees who were abused and were led to believe that forgiveness meant hiding their pain and only rejoicing in God&#39;s love for them. However, the Bible makes it clear that honest engagement with the brokenness of life is the prerequisite for understanding Jesus&rsquo; work. The gospel is not a Band-Aid meant to conceal our heartache. It is a promise meant to assure us that Christ is present in our pain and gives us the freedom to express our experience of it. Living in the reality of what Christ has done means experiencing both brokenness and redemption. We both groan and are comforted. In fact, it is a willingness to groan that ultimately leads to the comfort we find in crying out to God.</p>
<p><strong>Why is writing an important aspect of your work&mdash;and CCEF&rsquo;s ministry?</strong></p>
<p>Winston: I am a firm believer in the written word because a well-written book has the potential to influence Christians for generations. I get really excited about spending a year of my life writing a book that could potentially influence thousands of people. Alasdair and I are grateful for our donors who enable us all at CCEF to write.&nbsp;</p>
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Any Given DayAlasdair GrovesWinston SmithFri, 17 Jul 2015 20:43:16 +0000ccefnetadmin4203 at http://www.ccef.orgFree Side by Side Leader’s Guidehttp://www.ccef.org/resources/blog/free-side-side-leader-s-guide
<div class="wysywig-float-right" style="font-size: 80px; text-align: center;" text-align:=""><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/Side by Side_3d-down.jpg" style="width: 300px; height: 330px;" /></div>
<p>The leader&rsquo;s guide for the book&nbsp;<em>Side by Side</em>&nbsp;is free, but before you download it, let me give you some background.</p>
<p><strong>The Book</strong><br />The book started life about twenty-five years ago as a 650-page introduction to biblical counseling. Within one day of completing the first draft, I noticed that it was very bad and threw it away. A few years later I tried it again. That one came in at 550 pages and was less bad than the first but certainly not useful, so it sits on a filing cabinet fulfilling my grandchildren&rsquo;s scrap paper needs.&nbsp;<em>Side-by-Side</em>, then, has taken a long time to hatch. It is hard to simplify the terrain that we call biblical counseling.</p>
<p>The final result is nothing like its predecessors.&nbsp;<em>Side by Side</em>&nbsp;is a 163-page primer on how to help one another. Though it is established on theology that is often discussed in seminaries, it assumes that good theology is accessible to children&mdash;simple, but not simplistic. The book can be summarized this way: equipped with humility and love, we want to move toward others and know them well enough to pray for them. Very basic. But, when acted upon, it changes the culture of our churches.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Imagine. You need help so you ask a friend to pray for you. That friend is honored that you asked and agrees to help. And then, inspired by your request, the friend becomes a little more open and asks you to pray for him or her in return. Meanwhile, you add love to humility and move toward one other person. &ldquo;How are you?&rdquo; is all it takes. And you listen for what is on the person&rsquo;s heart&mdash;things good, things hard, things bad. You listen until the person leaves an imprint, which means that you will pray for that person. Not only that, you follow up. Who would want to miss what the Spirit does? When you do, that other person will be surprised by your care and love, and will probably share even more deeply with you. Now multiply those small ordinary moments.</p>
<p><strong>The Leader&rsquo;s Guide</strong><br />Some books are suited for private reading. This one is not. It is best done when part of a larger pastoral strategy to equip the church, and it is best done with a few friends or in a small group. If you read the book on your own try to envision how it could be part of a community project.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The leader&rsquo;s guide gives suggestions on how to organize the group time, it provides short summaries of each chapter, and includes two discussion questions (with the expectation that two will be more than enough). My goal with the leader&rsquo;s guide is to make the leader&rsquo;s job as easy as possible, even to the point that the leader could rotate each meeting.&nbsp;</p>
<p>While you are thinking about it, you could take a peek at it by clicking below.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;"><a href="/sites/default/files/side-by-side-leaders-guide.pdf" id="button-link">Download here</a></h2>
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Side by SideEd WelchMon, 13 Jul 2015 18:43:52 +0000ccefnetadmin4198 at http://www.ccef.orgThe Ultimate Treasure Hunthttp://www.ccef.org/resources/blog/ultimate-treasure-hunt
<p>I&rsquo;m increasingly convinced that creation is one big treasure hunt. God apparently loves hiding things in our world for us to discover and develop.</p>
<p>Think about the way God made the world. He hid little deposits of gold, silver and iron for us in a globe- sized sandbox. And then, inside the gold, silver and iron, he infused the potential for ornate chandeliers, skyscrapers and jackknives, all just waiting to be unlocked by his delighted children. Or take the way he tucked the Bernouli principle into the atmosphere at creation, so we could eventually build trans-Atlantic jetliners (not to mention the little TVs in the back of each seat). Or consider how in crafting our potential for language, he planted the seeds of Shakespeare and Simon and Garfunkel.&nbsp;</p>
<p>From particle accelerators to the trick jugglers on YouTube, creation is an endless unfolding of wonders and gifts waiting to be discovered through the collective efforts of humanity.&nbsp;</p>
<p>But I believe that God&rsquo;s <em>greatest</em> delight comes when the treasure we unearth and cultivate is the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of our brothers and sisters in Christ. There is no greater treasure we can dig up or develop than maturity and spiritual growth in the lives of those God has placed around us. The very fabric of existence constantly affirms that human life is fundamentally about serving our neighbor so that our neighbor might be made more like Christ. Such treasure literally lasts for all eternity.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s a grand view, isn&rsquo;t it? Yet, all this grandeur plays out in the concrete, mundane details of daily life. It happens as you enter into the life of a friend who is going through a hard season, or grieving the loss of a loved one, or struggling with heavy temptation. Offering help during these times has eternal implications. This places a sobering responsibility on us. And yet, it is also a thrilling invitation to participate in the creation of treasure that will still be bringing us joy in thousands of years.&nbsp;</p>
<p>This is why we have a conference focused on equipping the church in wise love and ministry every year. What could be more important than participating in the work of God in the lives of the broken image bearers he put around us? This is why I am especially excited about our topic this year: &ldquo;<a href="http://www.ccef.org/events/national-conference/2015">Side-by-Side: How God Helps Us Help Each Other.</a>&rdquo; Every last one of us has the capacity to help those we walk alongside, and every last one of us needs to be helped as well.&nbsp;</p>
<p>If you are someone who wants to grow in bringing out the potential treasure God has planted in his children, or simply someone who knows you need both your God and your neighbor to help you grow in the riches of your inheritance in Christ, I hope you&rsquo;ll join us.&nbsp;</p>
<h4 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ccef.org/events/national-conference/2015" id="button-link">More info</a></h4>
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Side by SideAlasdair GrovesThu, 09 Jul 2015 19:34:41 +0000ccefnetadmin4197 at http://www.ccef.org